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Frogpond 42.2 • 2019

Museum of Haiku
Literature Award

Haiku & Senryu

Essay 1 - "Owls"

Essay 2 - "Wright's Blindman Haiku"

Haibun

Haiga

Renku

Book Reviews

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Richard Wright’s Haiku and the Blindman as a Subject

by Dominic Dulin

"Richard Wright’s Haiku and the Blindman as a Subject"
(complete PDF version)

Here is a sample excerpt from the opening page of this interview:

With a Zen attitude, Richard Wright portrays a wealth of poetical subjects in his haiku, including a prostitute applying lipstick on Christmas, a lonely scarecrow, a snowy mountain, or a man sweeping snow from the sidewalk. In a handful of his haiku in Haiku: The Last Poems of an American Icon, Wright also turns his attention to the blindman. Wright shows many sides of the blindman as a character and subject in his haiku: the blindman is at times comical, curious, and revered in his Buddha nature.

As one would expect, there are many instances of the blindman interacting and being a part of nature in Wright’s haiku. One instance of this is Wright’s haiku involving the blindman and his dog:

         Pulling him ahead,
The blindman’s dog takes a path
         Between summer graves.

(61)

It is worth noting that, in this haiku, the dog seems to overshadow the blindman in a comical, yet practical way as he is at the mercy of the dog pulling him through the graves. To the dog, the graves mean nothing and if the blindman is not aware of where he is then perhaps the blindman also shares the dog’s ignorance. On the other hand, perhaps the trek of the blindman and his dog follows a stop at a relative or lover’s grave where a more dramatic and less comical scene of remembering, nostalgia, and mourning took place.

[feature continues for several more pages] . . .

Dulin, Dominic. "Richard Wright’s Haiku and the Blindman as a Subject." Frogpond 42.2, Spring-Summer 2019, 107-112.

This excerpt inclues the first page of the feature: page 107. The complete feature includes pages 107-112. To read the complete feature, click on the link to the PDF version:

"Richard Wright’s Haiku and the Blindman as a Subject"
(complete PDF version)

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